Chapter 18
Eighteen
Early one morning a few weeks after Thomas’s birthday, hoofbeats sounded outside the cottage, and Cullen whined and barked at the door.
My heart went cold, recalling hoofbeats outside the cruck house, ringing bridles, baying hounds, and a great wind battering at the door. Mairi spoke for me then, saying the rough fae outside could not take me from her, that she had claimed me for her own.
But this was no gloomy All Hallows. No winds howled outside, and it had been weeks since the last summer storm. My heart settled in my breast.
Thomas laced his boots in preparation to take his flocks out. I, still wearing only my underkirtle, stirred the porridge over the hearth. He and I exchanged glances.
It was early for visitors, and no one came to see us on horseback. My customers were too poor; it was rare we even had a short-sighted old ass tethered outside. But the hoofbeats slowed, and a whinny sounded as the horse came to a stop.
Thomas pulled his tunic down over his head then kissed me on the forehead.
“Best get decent, love. Mayhap the King himself has heard of your healing powers and come to pay you a call.” For all his jesting, there was a graveness to his expression I had never seen before.
I could not help but wonder: Had he been expecting company?
Why should he expect it? My memories flashed back to a letter, torn and found by Morven in the ashes of the hearth fire.
Thomas had never yet mentioned it to me.
I shrugged my kirtle on over my undergarments, tightening the lacing up the front. Surely someone had come to the wrong house, but if we had a notable guest, even an unintended one, I wanted to make a good impression. I was braiding my hair when there came a short, abrupt knock upon the door.
Cullen hung back, wary and ready to pounce.
“Easy boy,” said Thomas, catching a scruff of fur at the back of Cullen’s neck. “I think it’s no wolf, for they rarely knock.”
Wolf. I clutched my chest, envisioning a beast iridescent and monstrous large. Not the Dark Fool?
How long will thought of him continue to plague me thus?
Oblivious to my alarm, and laughing at his own joke, Thomas opened the door.
“Thomas de Lyne?” a deep voice asked.
“I have not been given that name.” His voice was flat with annoyance and, if one listened for it, a tinge of hurt. “They call me Thomas Shepherd.” He stepped back to let the man enter and tilted his head. “You look familiar to me. Have we met?”
“Ivor,” said the man. “His Grace’s herald?” He puffed his chest out as he said it, drawing the eye to his fine livery in the baron’s colors of gold and royal blue.
Not our typical visitor at all. He had come from the manor, Thomas’s home of birth.
I dropped into a curtsy, but Thomas put his hand on my arm, shaking his head. I straightened again.
Thomas frowned. “I did not expect the baron to send a man here. Lammas is nigh. Should he not be preparing for the harvest boon?”
Lammas was nigh. It filled my blood with thrumming energy, like a swarm of bees surrounding a hive. Dreams of dancing, the ringing of bridles, the taste of forbidden fruit kept me up at night, and not even Thomas’s arms around me comforted me enough to stay asleep.
Faery called, louder than ever, for soon the Veil would thin.
But for the mortals, Lammas was a time of more earthly concerns. “Baron de Lyne is most preoccupied with the harvest boon,” said the herald. “He greatly resents having to do without my services at this time. But, apparently, you ignored the letter that was sent.”
The letter that was sent.
The letter that was thrown into the hearth fire.
Unread?
“Aye, there was a letter,” Thomas said. “From Margaret of Roxburgh. I took it for idle gossip and tossed it aside.”
Margaret of Roxburgh. I weighed the words in my head, sorted them as a beast does scent, whether it was predator or food.
I could not tell. I knew only I misliked them, that they set my belly to churning and made my mouth taste of bitter grass.
Struggling to keep my tone light, I asked, “Who is Margaret of Roxburgh?”
“The sheriff’s daughter,” said Thomas. “Lady-in-waiting to my fath—that is, the baron’s wife. I knew her long ago, but we have not spoken in some time.”
I swallowed hard, keeping my face neutral. Thomas had a past. There had been many, many women before me. I had resolved I would not let it trouble me. He hadn’t looked at anyone else since I came along.
Thomas belonged to me.
My fingers tingled with heat. Did I but let them, they might shoot out flame.
I clenched them into fists instead and took a perverse delight in the heat radiating against my palms.
“It appears she wished to renew your acquaintance.” The lightness of my tone made me ill; halfway unto a lie itself. And I held back the reminder that wished to follow:
You do not owe Margaret of Roxburgh your life.
And she is as nothing compared to me.
Ivor looked down his long, elegant nose. “You discarded the letter?” Thomas might as well have confessed to stealing His Grace’s warhorse. What had been in the letter?
“I did not expect the baron would ask Margaret to do his dirty work for him.”
The herald’s mouth clamped shut. He reached into his satchel and pulled out a letter. “There is another,” he said as he thrust it at Thomas. “From the baroness herself.”
Thomas wrinkled his brow. “The baroness? What has she . . . ?” He broke the seal and began to read, his lips drawing thin. Dearly I wished I were privy to his thoughts.
“What is it?” I finally had to ask.
Thomas returned the scroll, his face troubled. “The baroness has taken ill, she and my brother both.”
The baroness was as naught to me. I had never even seen her before.
And the boy—well, he had pushed the cuckoo’s egg out of the nest. I should resent him on Thomas’s behalf.
But Mairi Grieve’s legacy pressed down strong upon me, and I would have said anything to wipe the worried expression off Thomas’s face.
“What are her symptoms?” I asked, without thinking. “Fever? Aches? Is her belly sore?”
Ivor squirmed inside his fine livery and addressed Thomas alone. “His Grace commands you return to the manor at once.”
To the manor. Away from the cottage, from his flocks and his hound.
Away from the life he had made with me.
I stole a glance at Thomas’s leg. He scarce even needed his cane anymore.
He scarcely needed me.
Thomas stepped away from the baron’s man, shaking his head. “No. ’Tis too great a hardship. I have only just gotten back on my feet, with the help of this one here.” He took my hand and held it, firmly yet gently, like a captive bird he feared would fly away.
And so you should fly, little bird, cuckoo’s child. Back to the nest where you belong. There await such revels as you have never known, wine to bring the ecstasy of forgetfulness, your people ungodly fair.
Faery still called. Even after the life I had made with my shepherd king, when the Veil thinned, it sought me out.
I squeezed Thomas’s hand, imagined my fingers twining like a thorny rose vine around his wrist.
Thomas squared his shoulders as he faced the baron’s man. “It is nearly Lammas, as ye have said. The harvest is nigh, the busiest time of the year. I have made a life for myself here, without the baron’s help. I have no mind to see it disrupted because the baroness has caught a summer cold—”
“Your brother Malcolm is on his deathbed,” said the herald, shifting his weight uncomfortably. “So does the baroness claim.”
Thomas’s eyes grew wide, his face pale. “My brother Malcolm . . .” He drew it out, as if he had never thought of the baron’s other son that way. They were never raised as brothers, after all.
It set me on edge, as if he slipped through my fingers, recalled to the family of his birth. My nails grew long, thornlike, and plunged into the heel of Thomas’s palm.
Back to Faery. You were never meant to live with this mortal so long. Come away, come away, the voices of the forest sang out.
But something deeper within me cried out, No.
The shepherd is mine.
“Bess?” Thomas looked down in alarm at his hand, where my thorny nail had raised a bead of blood.
My cheeks grew warm, and the thorn retreated into an ordinary fingernail again.
For Thomas to leave me was unheard of. Impossible. Worse. Unforgivable. I had claimed the shepherd king as my own.
Thomas owed me his life.
“I can help.” The words that pushed out of me were those of Mairi Grieve’s apprentice and heir.
Both Thomas and the baron’s man stared at me, blinking.
My cheeks grew warm, and I felt somehow naked, exposed. “My apologies if I am untoward,” I said, cringing at these backward Christian notions of propriety, “but I am a cunning woman. I could prepare a brew to help the baroness and the boy.”
Better that than let the shepherd out of my grasp.
“A cunning woman?” The herald tossed his head back and laughed. “Think you not the baron has summoned the most learned doctors in Selkirkshire?” A stony glance from Thomas silenced him. “Your pardon. I did not realize she was serious.” He ran his finger around the edge of his collar.
Thomas placed his hands on both my shoulders, pulling me gently aside. “I do not even wish to return to the manor house. I would not subject you to that place as well.”
I smiled sweetly. “But I can do good there.”
Thomas shook his head. “For all I know, this is some whim of the baroness’s only. She does make much of every little sniffle and cough.” He threw a glance at Ivor, who remained stony-faced.
“Then it is better I come. For mayhap I can shorten the duration of her illness, and we will both be back here ere long.” In the small, cozy shepherd’s cottage, with Cullen barking at our heels.
“I do not wish to be parted from you, lass. You are my wood nymph, my heart, and my life.” Thomas tucked back my hair. “But the baron asked for me only, and should he take offense—”
“Do you not take offense?” I hissed, wearying of mortal protocol. “The baron dallied with your mother and left you to fend for yourself. Is what we have more shameful?” Such spirit rose within me, I dreaded what might come out if he said yes.
Thomas stroked my cheek, staring deeply into my eyes. “There is nothing shameful in what I feel for you. I would stand on the highest mountaintop and shout it out for all to hear.”
I would have commanded him to do so, had the moment presented itself. These were a lover’s words, the speech of a man devoted to me. Yet it was not enough.
I owe you my life, Thomas had said, and might have soldered us both into a cage of iron. I would not, could not accept anything less.
“Let me be sure of you, then.” I did not plead, I cajoled, reeling him in like a fisherman does a salmon, like the seductive wood nymph I had been named.
My words snaked out to wrap around him, trapping him like a squirrel among the thorny briars.
“Be brave enough to claim me. In front of your family, your blood.” For my feelings for him were drowning out Faery’s call, and it did not come without a price.
Thomas’s face stilled, his expression flat. I could not have said whether his will was yet his own. He took my hand in his, and we stood before the henchman of his father, Baron de Lyne. “I shall go to the manor house, and Bess shall come along.”
Ivor squirmed. “This is hardly regular—”
I had no time for his protests, but drew my gaze to him, snaking out tendrils of my power to bend his will. “You shall allow me to come.”
Ivor’s face softened; his eyes passed over me approvingly, as though he saw some great temptress and not a stumpy peasant girl. “Of course, she is welcome. I shall let the baron know to expect you both.”